The Pivot of John's Prologue

Abstract

The prospect of writing anything further about the prologue of John reminds one of the verdict quoted by W. C. van Unnik in a similar context some twenty years ago: ‘the new things he said were not true and the true things were not new’. The prudent course may, therefore, be to refine an already established position with the hope of being able to say something true, even if it is not altogether new. The thesis of this article is that the prologue is a chiasm with verse 12bat its centre. That the prologue is chiastic is not a new thesis; that its centre isv. 12bis. The first part of this paper attempts to establish this thesis. The second part studies the key phrase inv. 12b, τέκνα Θεοũ, and the implications of its position in the prologue.